When I watch this video I almost wish I had the foresight to collect this type of stuff about my Nan. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t do enough when I see things like this video, but I realise that this video is made only of the best and most perfect and sublime moments. I remember at the end that Nan would forget things a lot and repeat herself, but under all of that was her assertive, strongly independent personality. Along with that came her pride, which I think was important to her. I don’t think Nan liked the incapability that came with getting older, and she sometimes would get frustrated when she couldn’t put her thoughts into words or at the home she would hide her dirty clothes and would change clothes herself so that the staff would not see that she hadn’t made it to the toilet on time. I miss her a lot… I think when we discuss or see things about older people that they’re idealised (or even worse, considered ‘cute’) and we ignore the realities that come with it.

Things to ponder while you have lunch: What is it to live a long life? How is it to forget? Do you have any regrets when it comes to your older relatives? Do you fear getting older and what comes with it? Do you try to look after yourself now to ensure a smoother ageing process?

I recently stumbled upon this short story, The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu, which won the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards. I like how the fantastic elements of the story are presented in a pedestrian way.

One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

“Kan, kan,” she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.

She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious.

She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.

“Kan,” she said. “Laohu.” She put her hands down on the table and let go.

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom’s creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. “Rawrr-sa,” it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

“Zhejiao zhezhi,” Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

#

Dad had picked Mom out of a catalog.

One time, when I was in high school, I asked Dad about the details. He was trying to get me to speak to Mom again.

What do you think about the story? Do you identify with the narrator’s struggle to fit in? Why do you think the narrator took out his struggle on his mother? Was it because she was an easy target, or an ‘Other’? Have you ever done something when you’re younger that you reflect on as an adult and feel deep shame about? Do you feel like this story is sci-fi or fantasy or neither?

I suppose this too is a bit of a late Mother’s Day post. I love you mum! You’re the best!

So I recently (or not really recently at all, now) saw the Alex Colville exhibition with my dad at the AGO. I really enjoyed it. I remember going to the Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH) with my dad as a kid and seeing Colville’s Horse and Train (see above right) and being captivated by it. Colville has an interesting style that I find calming in its own right. The exhibition was comprehensive, and I learned a lot about Colville the person as well. What I liked is that his wife was his muse, and he painted her extensively. You can almost feel how much he cared about her through his paintings. The exhibit featured paintings of her from her youth through to old age.

I also really liked his paintings of birds, particularly the painting Seven Crows (see above bottom). They look really dynamic, and it’s almost as if it’s painted from a bird’s perspective.

What do you think about Colville’s work? Do you think that his love for his wife is evident through his paintings?

The following afternoon I went to Dad’s. I had put on a white shirt, black cotton trousers, and white basketball shoes. In order not to feel so utterly naked, as I did when I wore only a shirt, I took a jacket with me, slung it over my shoulder and held it by the hook since it was too hot outside to wear it.

I jumped off the bus after Lundsbroa Bridge and ambled along the drowsy, deserted summer street to the house he was renting, where I had stayed that winter.

He was in the back garden pouring lighter fluid over the charcoal in the grill when I arrived. Bare chest, blue swimming shorts, feet thrust into a pair of sloppy sneakers without laces. Again this getup was unlike him.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Have a seat.”

He nodded to the bench by the wall.

The kitchen window was open, from inside came the clattering of glasses and crockery.

“Unni’s busy inside,” he said. “She’ll be here soon.” His eyes were glassy.

He stepped toward me, grabbed the lighter from the table, and lit the charcoal. A low almost transparent flame, blue at the bottom, rose in the grill. It didn’t appear to have any contact with the charcoal at all, it seemed to be floating above it.

“Heard anything from Yngve?” he asked, of my older brother.

“Yes,” I said. “He dropped by briefly before leaving for Bergen.”

“He didn’t come by,” Dad said.

“He said he was going to, see how you were doing, but he didn’t have time.”

Dad stared into the flames, which were lower already. Turned and came toward me, sat down on a camping chair. Produced a glass and bottle of red wine from nowhere. They must have been on the ground beside him.

“I’ve been relaxing with a drop of wine today,” he said. “It’s summer after all, you know.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Your mother didn’t like that,” he said.

“Oh?” I said.

“No, no, no,” he said. “That wasn’t good.”

“No,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, emptying the glass in one swig.

“Gunnar’s been round, snooping,” he said, of my uncle. “Afterward he goes straight to Grandma and Grandad and tells them what he’s seen.”

“I’m sure he just came to visit you,” I said.

Dad didn’t answer. He refilled his glass.

“Are you coming, Unni?” he shouted. “We’ve got my son here!”

“OK, coming,” we heard from inside.

“No, he was snooping,” he repeated. “Then he ingratiates himself with your grandparents.”

He stared into the middle distance with the glass resting in his hand. Turned his head to me.

“Would you like something to drink? A Coke? I think we’ve got some in the fridge. Go and ask Unni.”

I stood up, glad to get away.

Gunnar was a sensible, fair man, decent and proper in all ways, he always had been, of that there was no doubt. So where had Dad’s sudden backbiting come from?

After all the light in the garden, at first I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face in the kitchen. Unni put down the scrub brush when I went in, came over and gave me a hug.

“Good to see you, Karl Ove.” She smiled.

I smiled back. She was a warm person. The times I had met her she had been happy, almost flushed with happiness. And she had treated me like an adult. She seemed to want to be close to me. Which I both liked and disliked.

So I’ve beenreading the “My Struggle” series by Karl Ove Knausgaard. I’m almost through the third of six books, and the fourth book is coming out fairly soon. I was excited to see an excerpt of the fourth book published on Vice. You can read the rest of it here. It’s a good way to while away part of your lunch hour. What I like about Karl Ove as a character (since the books are ‘fictional’) is that I relate to him. I have similar anxieties, even if my experiences are completely different. What I wonder is if other people feel the same way.

What do you think about Knausgaard’s work? Have you read his books? Do you relate to Karl Ove the character? How do you feel about semi-autobiographical works of ‘fiction’?

Tailoring is so interesting. I always like watching these haute couture process videos. Like other trades, it feels ‘lost to time’ in its own way. I always imagine owning these beautiful clothes too, but of course, they’re out of reach. I want to learn some of these techniques to make my own clothes to measure, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the level of skill it takes to make something so beautiful. I remember watching my cousin (a tailor) make trousers and it was fascinating.

What do you think about made to measure clothes? Do you have any? What about haute couture? Do you ever dream about owning beautiful clothes?

I remember when I started training Muay Thai how difficult it was. Amir was tough. The warm ups were brutal and long. I’m not a tough person, I thought. I still think that. Eventually the warm ups became less difficult, and my technique improved. After a few years, our class was cancelled at the chain gym that one summer, we trained outside, checking kicks bare-shinned in the park. I still have a little dent in my right shin to remind me of those times. The sweaty camaraderie of Muay Thai. I felt leaner after training two hours, lither, lighter. Proud.

I always find something pleasurable about visiting local butchers and bakeries and greengrocers and cheesemongers and the like. Maybe it’s because you establish rapport and create some kind of meaning to it. For me I find it almost ritualistic, like I’m convening with the old gods or something like that. I guess it’s because it’s a bit old-fashioned in some respects, and because I have an obsession with the past. There’s something about carefully selecting the ingredients you’ll cook later, leisurely. I think that it’s the slower pace that the act of visiting a butcher promotes. I usually visit the butcher on a day when I have a lot of time, too, or when I’m planning to cook something specialised and need something specific. Of course these places tend to be a bit more expensive, but I don’t mind it once in a while, and I suppose once I’m more stable, I’d likely frequent them more.

Over lunch, maybe mull it over and think about what you like or dislike about visiting the local butcher or greengrocer or what have you? What do you like to buy there? Do you find it pleasurable to visit these places and build rapport, or do you prefer the supermarket? Is going to local shops part of a quest for authenticity?

I love animation. The start of the noon series on this blog was actually an animation. I think it’s very apt; it’s funny to see alien creatures behaving exactly as we would. It also makes me think about what life forms we might find in space – can we even recognise them as such or communicate? Or will our laziness cause us to destroy an entire civilisation without realising it? I don’t really think that pondering this is the intention of the animation, but it’s enjoyable. When I think about what’s outside of our planet, I feel rather small. What do you think about outer space? Is it vast and empty, or is there life that we haven’t found yet?

The Berlin Wall has always fascinated me, since it effectively ceased to exist shortly before I was born. I remember as a child dad going to Berlin and bringing my brother and I back bits of wall with colourful spray paint on. Since then, I always wanted to go to Berlin, and I did manage to visit with dad a few years ago. I hope you find these videos interesting.

This edition of noon features a story to read by Haruki Murakami, called Yesterday. Murakami is one of my favourite authors. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

As far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song “Yesterday” (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) was a guy named Kitaru. He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath.

YesterdayIs two days before tomorrow,The day after two days ago.

This is how it began, as I recall, but I haven’t heard it for a long time and I’m not positive that’s how it went. From start to finish, though, Kitaru’s lyrics were almost meaningless, nonsense that had nothing to do with the original words. That familiar lovely, melancholy melody paired with the breezy Kansai dialect—which you might call the opposite of pathos—made for a strange combination, a bold denial of anything constructive. At least, that’s how it sounded to me. At the time, I just listened and shook my head. I was able to laugh it off, but I also read a kind of hidden import in it.

I first met Kitaru at a coffee shop near the main gate of Waseda University, where we worked part time, I in the kitchen and Kitaru as a waiter. We used to talk a lot during downtime at the shop. We were both twenty, our birthdays only a week apart.

Did you enjoy the story? What do you think about the shift in time? Do you think it has a wistful quality to it (like other stories by Murakami)? Have you read any other work by Haruki Murakami? What’s your favourite? My favourites are probably The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, or Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, though After Dark holds a special place in my heart because the night-time theme of it reflects parts of my life where I spent a lot of time wandering through the night (literally, not figuratively). I really liked the tenderness in this story, though.

Emily

One more thing! If you do live in Ontario, don’t forget to vote today in the provincial elections! Look for your polling station here.